Nearly 1 billion people don’t have access to clean water, and the consequences are fatal. Diarrhea is one of the leading killers of children under the age of five. Fortunately, the solutions needed to access clean water can be affordable and re ...

When the sun goes down, the day ends. No work after dark, no studying. That’s the reality for one quarter of the world’s population that lives without electricity. Inventive design and the falling cost of solar power is lighting up homes ...

Technology is essential to good health worldwide. Product designers are revealing its potential with devices such as paper-based rapid disease diagnostics, accurate male circumcision tools that can reduce the rate of HIV infection, and suites of tele ...

Informed construction saves lives, and it also just makes life more pleasant. Architects and engineers are mining the world’s traditional building techniques to find better ways to contend with earthquakes and floods and to adapt to problems li ...

870 million people worldwide are chronically undernourished. Irrigating crops is a simple solution that can double the amount of food a farm produces. But as much as 80 percent of farmland worldwide is not irrigated. Tested machines and new innovati ...

About one in three people worldwide don’t have access to improved sanitation, but managing waste could solve a lot of the world’s health problems. For all of its importance, the issue still gets little attention. We have the solutions. Good, ...

The boom in mobile phone ownership has been one of the unanticipated success stories of global development. And with all of that computing power in the hands of so many people, software engineers are at the leading edge of the work to improve lives. ...

Bridges, boats and wheels are connecting people in inventive ways. Bicycle ambulances save lives in the world’s hard-to-reach communities, clinics on buses take medical care to the village, and farmers build do-it-yourself tractors and drive tr ...

WAS THE ARTICLE USEFUL?

Banking in Rural Tanzanian Villages: Now There’s an App for That

Two billion people in the world don’t have a bank account. But that doesn’t mean they don’t use money similarly to people who do.

Wes Wasson, founder of financial tech startup DreamStart Labs, witnessed firsthand the relative sophistication of informal financial networks while he was working in microfinance in West Africa. With no commercial banks in many rural villages, women create their own, called village savings and loan associations. They pool their savings, appoint treasurers, hold community meetings, and issue small loans to each other. One woman’s successful repayment of that money benefits the entire group.

Village savings and loan associations aren’t technologically sophisticated. In most cases, loans are logged and tracked on paper, and money is stored in a lock-box in one member’s home. They are, however, successful. The development non-profit organization CARE, which has helped found more than 200,000 village savings and loan associations around the world, estimates that loan repayment rates are 99 percent.

“Typical [village association] savings groups are doubling their income because every bit of interest goes back into the group,” Wes Wasson, DreamStart Labs

Wasson attributes this success rate to the intimate community aspect of these financial networks.

“They have a [high] level of social capital that you don’t see in typical microfinance institutions,” he says. He adds that their financials are “off the charts.”

“Typical savings groups are doubling their income because every bit of interest goes back into the group,” he says.

Wasson’s takeaway was that there is a good way to accelerate financial inclusion, but it isn’t necessarily to bring formal financial services to adults who don’t have access to them. Rather, a better starting point is helping to formalize the services they already use. That’s what DreamStart Labs, and specifically its DreamSave mobile application, aims to do.

DreamSave is an app that helps village savings and loan associations go digital. Through the app, the associations can issue and track mobile money loans, save repayment records and update members on their loan status. What’s more, the digital record keeping could eventually be used as a form of credit history that would give association members access to formal financial services.

“The type of funding we provide often comes at a critical time for these startups… They need enough to finish their prototypes and to test them,” – June Sugiyama, Director, Vodafone Americas Foundation

DreamStart Labs has been working with Project Concern International, a non-profit organization working to alleviate poverty, to pilot its app with village savings and loan associations in Tanzania. In that nation, Wasson estimates that as much as (USD) $1 billion is sitting in association lockboxes. DreamSave is still in the prototype stage—the fourth, to be exact—but Wasson’s hope, naturally, is that most of Tanzania’s informal community capital will eventually flow through the app within the next three years.

To help DreamSave get there, the Vodafone Americas Foundation recently awarded DreamStart Labs with a (USD) $100,000 grant as a winner of its Wireless Innovation Project. The project is an annual competition that provides seed funding for early stage startups using technology to tackle social issues. As the philanthropic arm of global telecommunications giant Vodafone, the foundation started the competition nine years ago. The impetus was the recognition that many technology-based startups needed funding to help them get through the research and prototyping stage and into the market.

“The type of funding we provide often comes at a critical time for these startups,” explains June Sugiyama, director of the Vodafone Americas Foundation. “They aren’t mega startup companies, so we’re not talking about millions of dollars [for each]. They need enough to finish their prototypes and to test them.”

Since launching the Wireless Innovation Project, Vodafone Americas Foundation has awarded millions of dollars in grants to 27 companies. Sixty-five percent of the competition’s winners have made it to market and have impacted more than 40 million lives. That 65 percent success rate compares to only about 25 percent in the traditional venture capital world, Sugiyama says, underscoring the importance of grant funding to help new technologies mature.

“We are also very choosy and frugal,” Sugiyama admits. “We find the organizations that work quickly but have full working knowledge of the groups of people and issues they’re trying to help… organizations [backed by] individuals like Wes [Wasson].”

Wasson agrees that “full working knowledge” is essential for technologies like DreamSave that are working to break the cycle of global poverty. He says one of the most common mistakes he sees among social technology startups is that they try to reinvent or impose ideas that are familiar to their founders.

“It’s easy for us to see all of the things that are wrong” in low-income communities, he explains. “We take a different approach. We try to find out what’s working and then figure out how we can help make that process more effective.”

Funding international engineering projects can be tricky, but the private sector has evolved some tactics that work. There are hundreds of private-sector funding opportunities available – competitions, grants, crowd-funding and others – many of which are documented here on E4C. Between businesses, foundations and charitable individuals, the private sector nimbly provides billions of dollars in funding. Unfortunately, despite the size of this funding pool, the competition is fierce. The US...

As much as one-third of the food produced in the world is lost or spoiled before it can be eaten, while nearly one billion...

by engineers. for everyone.

E4C Membership is a curated experience! When you become
a member, we will tailor a unique user profile for you based on
the way you engage with our content over time. Your actions and
preferences will allow us to serve you content that is most
relevant to you. In addition, becoming an E4C member grants you
access to exclusive engagement opportunities and the E4C
newsletter.

Join E4C and become a part of a global community that
believes engineering can change the world!

Did you know you can customize your E4C experience? Find more of your favorite articles, webinars, events and courses when you sign up for a FREE membership. Once a member, the more content you engage with, the more relevant we can make it for you!

As a member you have access to exclusive, curated content that changes on your homepage based on what you read the most.

Membership gives you access to over a million practitioners working in global development, many of whom are looking for talent like you!

Post or peruse Job, Training & Volunteer Opportunities

Discuss & share projects in our Community Space

Members are in the know! You’ll be invited to our webinars and
special events and receive access to our monthly newsletter.